


Invisible Provisional Cast-On

by Nununununu



Series: Nununununu's Kinktober 2019 fics [30]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Clothes Theft, Domestic, Don't copy to another site, Explicit Sexual Content, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Kinktober 2019, Knitting, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Recovery, Sensory Deprivation, Sexual Frustration, Unreliable Narrator, day 29
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-01-05 02:17:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21205868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu
Summary: It starts with his socks.





	Invisible Provisional Cast-On

**Author's Note:**

> Day 29: James "Bucky" Barnes / Steve Rogers (Clothes Theft, Sensory Deprivation, Sexual Frustration #2)
> 
> **Trigger warning** for non-detailed references to delayed ejaculation and past anorgasmia (inability to achieve orgasm), plus implied past erectile dysfunction, thanks to probable PTSD due to Bucky's past that isn't gone into.

It starts with his socks.

Bucky’s not one to particularly pay much attention to what he’s wearing, at least not nowadays, although he’s been getting better at it – been trying to make an effort to buy clothes because he likes them, or thinks he maybe likes them, paying attention to the feel of the material and the colour and style of it, and _not_ allowing himself to get something that’s a disguise, something that’ll keep him from notice, something that’s just cloth to cover himself, just there to be worn.

Case in point: the Avengers socks caught his attention in a shop the other day – he’s making himself get out more also, even though part of him hates it; _because_ part of him hates it, in fact – has been trying to force himself to step outside and do something he doesn’t feel comfortable with every couple of days or so; what would seem like fairly baby steps to most, but a bigger deal than he likes to admit for him.

Anyway, he’d forced himself into some sort of proper clothing shop and not a thrift store, and there the socks had been next to all _kinds_ of men’s underwear the folks from back in his and Stevie’s time would never have believed, and the rows of brightly coloured pairs had caught his eye.

Captain America’s shield had appeared to have been one of the most popular designs. There had been a design for each of the main Avengers – Stark’s helmet, Pott’s helmet, Thor’s hammer and sword combo, Widow’s Bites – but the central space on the display reserved for Steve’s shield held only one last remaining pair.

Bucky had found himself picking up the socks without really knowing why. Staring at them for probably longer than he should have done, long enough some man beside him huffed and picked up a pair of Hulk ones instead, and Bucky very carefully didn’t think anything about violence or let himself acknowledge any churning in his guts at the proximity.

Dragging himself out of his stupor, he’d added the socks to the couple of other things he was buying, thinking vaguely of giving them as a joke to Steve. And then, on his way to the cash register, a plain dark green pair had caught his eye for absolutely no reason.

He would have walked past them before. He didn’t need them; he had been shopping for underwear (he’d made himself pick out a colour, not white or black) and was starting to feel a bit fraught, starting to feel the undeniable need to escape.

But the socks were soft and unnecessarily plush, his fingers sinking in when he touched them, and he ended up buying them alongside the Captain America ones and a few pairs of dark red and navy briefs.

He ends up wearing those dark green socks most days too, over the weeks to come, whenever they aren’t in the wash. On the days he isn’t wearing them, he wears the shield patterned ones: he never does give them to Steve. Even when Bucky next goes clothes shopping, a handful of months down the line, and buys new pairs identical to the green ones but in red and blue, they remain his favourite.

He’s allowed – determined – to have a favourite nowadays.

But then the left one disappears.

\--

Steve’s never made a secret out of purloining Bucky’s clothes. Back in the days when they were living together during the war, there was this ratty old shirt of Bucky’s he practically never got to wear himself, Steve so frequently appropriated it for a smock, wearing it tent-like over his narrow, bony shoulders. Steve had tended to wear Bucky’s worn out old dressing gown as well, see-through at the elbows as it was, as often as he wore his own just as shabby one. Bucky had been quite content to drape himself in one of their scratchy woollen blankets when they couldn’t afford to heat the apartment – which was always, except the worst times when Steve was ill, when Bucky made darned sure they had heat regardless of the means the money was obtained – shuffling around their small cramped rooms with it tossed over his head. He’d toss Steve’s own dressing gown over his own on those too-thin shoulders, and blithely ignored the punk’s objections, relieved when the added layer helped quell his best friend’s shivers.

Steve had always been careful never to purloin any of the clothes Bucky particularly liked though, back in the day when such things were important to him; not without asking, not without Bucky giving him an express okay. It had been the same the other way round in a sense with Steve’s drawings – Bucky had made free with the ones Steve left scattered over their rickety table or the tiny kitchen counter or, frequently, the floor; pinning them up on the wall or adding his own notes to them, little comments or story ideas, knowing Steve would just smile or snicker or shake his head. But the drawings Steve did in his notebooks though, the ones that really meant something to him, Bucky always asked first before he even looked at those.

So the notion that Steve would just snaflle one of Bucky’s favourite socks – and why only one? – is odd. Unusual. Bucky can’t stop thinking about it. Perhaps especially because Steve makes no secret of it: it turns up on his foot the same day. Bucky spies him wearing it the instant he walks into the kitchen from having triple checked the washing machine and dryer, and under his bed and the corners of the bathroom where things sometimes stray. Steve’s chopping some sort of stir fry for lunch, and there it is – Bucky’s green sock, on that large Captain America foot.

“All right there, Buck?” Steve’s gaze is innocent in the way it always is when he’s got something afoot. Literally as it turns out, this time.

“I know what you’re playing at, punk, and I’ve gotta tell you now you’re not going to get away with it,” Bucky gives him a look on his way to fetch the orange juice – which is all bluff, as he’s got no idea.

He is planning on getting that sock back though, one way or another.

“You think that, do you?” Steve smiles as if he’s delighted. He tosses the vegetables into the wok, “I’m glad we’re in agreement about the rules of this game.”

“Hm,” Bucky similarly has no clue what rules he’s apparently agreed to. But he steals one of Steve’s plain white socks out of the dryer on his way back to his room, all the same.

It doesn’t feel enough somehow. Bucky’s intently aware of his best friend’s eyes on him while they eat dinner; while Bucky helps with the clean-up in the aftermath and then digs out a soft fresh big ball of wool from his stash to get set in on.

Steve’s plain white sock feels kind of cold and not that comfortable on his foot, especially in comparison to the other foot clad in its usual green.

Bucky goes out the next day and buys a pair of rich blue ones, the same type as his green ones, and leaves them on the foot of Steve’s bed.

“The present was much appreciated, Buck, but you’re still not getting this one back,” Steve wiggles his toes at Bucky when he’s discovered the gift. Bucky considers leaping on his leg and wrestling it off him. He decides to retain the idea as a backup plan, if lingering near the washing machine when it’s completed its dry cycle isn’t effective.

“Wear the blue socks, Stevie,” he instructs as he stalks out of the room to fetch his knitting needles and the endless scarf he’s creating, “They match your eyes and all.”

Steve makes a sort of quiet choking sound behind him that cuts off the instant Bucky pauses in surprise. He does however wear one of the blue socks after that. On the other foot, in addition to the green.

Bucky steals one of Steve’s wifebeaters in return.

\--

He takes to wearing it at random times around the apartment, particularly when it’s unexpected – like when Steve’s stumbling into the kitchen in search of an early morning bowl of cereal, and Bucky is usually still holed up in his room, clad in at least four layers.

Steve nearly falls over himself gratifyingly. His feet are bare for once. Bucky makes plans to sneak into his room to recover his sock while his best friend goes for an early morning jog.

Stevie instead stays in and draws all morning, the shit.

“Haven’t you got somewhere you need to be?” Bucky eventually enquires, buttoning up one of Steve’s shirts over the wifebeater. It’s all sorts of the wrong shape – too wide over his shoulders, too long at the wrists, pretty stupidly baggy around the waist – but Steve glances up at him from his sketchbook and practically swallows his tongue.

“Bucky –” His name comes out stifled.

“All right there, Stevie?” Bucky fetches him a glass of water magnanimously, intently aware of Steve’s eyes tracking him.

“I’m taking the morning off,” Steve’s pencil has all but stilled on the sheet he was previously fervently shading, “No need to go running every day.”

“Did someone kidnap you and replace you with an imposter?” Bucky raises his eyebrows deliberately high in illustration of his utter disbelief. He also pokes Steve with the blunt end of a pencil, just to check.

“Oi!” Steve arches away from it that bit too late, just as he always did when they were kids. He’s laughing even as he bats at Bucky, “Jerk.”

There’s only ever been and ever will be one answer to that.

“Punk.”

Steve shoves his chair away from the table, swinging around to face Bucky. “You’ve stolen my shirt.”

The blatant accusation leaves Bucky gaping for a second. He retaliates shortly however with, “I want my sock.”

“You do, do you?” A sideways smile is threatening to make itself known on Steve’s face, the one so filled with mischief and daring most people out there probably wouldn’t imagine for one moment would be made by Captain America.

Steve raises his chin – and yeah. Everyone would no doubt recognise _that_ stubborn mug. “I want my shirt back.”

Bucky isn’t about to back down. Instead that part of him that always responds to that combination of mischief and stubbornness compels him to up the ante. “Then take it back.”

Steve reaches into his pocket, pulls out Bucky's sock and, with a twitch of that sideways smile, puts it on. Then he pushes slowly up off his chair, very broad, very tall, his gaze centred on Bucky all the while, “You gonna try to take back that sock?”

“_Try_?” Bucky snorts, “I’m planning on it.”

The living room floor isn’t the best place for an impromptu wrestling match, given that it’s fairly occupied with furniture, but they make do, hands grappling, knees finds places to brace and flip, grunting as they roll each other over. It’s – playful really, much like when they were kids, except when Steve’s hands go to Bucky’s chest and start fiddling with the buttons, undoing them nimbly, and Bucky’s hands go to Steve’s own shirt because he’s realised Steve’s craftily hidden one of Bucky’s own t-shirts under it, and then –

Yeah, not so much.

“Uh –” Steve’s hips jerk a bit when Bucky pins his best friend beneath him, and the incipient hardness nudging against Bucky’s thigh is not like when they were kids at all.

The redness swamping Steve’s expression is entirely familiar, however.

“That a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me,” Bucky has to deadpan therefore, and it’s terrible enough that Steve cracks a smile and stops looking quite so much like he’s going to spontaneously combust.

His cock also twitches against Bucky’s thigh a bit, which answers that question pretty much.

“I – don’t remember,” Steve gets out and makes a face at himself, at the less than stellar come back, but it’s okay, Bucky can work with that.

“You don’t remember?” He raises his eyebrows at Steve once again, because this easy, actually, it’s so easy, and Steve’s hands stir back into life after a second, resuming the unbuttoning when Bucky grins down at him. “Maybe you should check.”

“Maybe _you_ should check,” Steve fires back, recovering swiftly, as Bucky knew he would.

“You’re not wearing my underwear, are you,” Bucky suddenly thinks to enquire, and the look Steve gives him entirely fails to be in any way convincingly innocent.

“I would never.”

Bucky aims a look at him, “You absolutely would,” and realises that, actually –

Steve really, truly absolutely would. And Bucky –

Bucky really, _really_ likes the idea.

“Huh.”

\--

Steve _is_ wearing a pair of Bucky’s navy briefs, as it turns out, as Bucky discovers when he’s wrangled his best friend out of his clothes – out of many of _Bucky’s_ clothes – and he’s got his sock tugged off Steve’s foot and buried in his own pocket. He’s nearly laughing too much to succeed in this, however, just as Steve is nearly laughing too much to try to get it back off him, although his hands still seem to wander everywhere over Bucky, ticklish and _brilliant_, before finally making it towards that pocket.

Bucky’s cock is half hard by now, compared to the rigid bulge Steve’s been sporting since fairly early on in their wrestling match – it always takes Bucky quite a long time to get there nowadays and he can’t always finish, which is frustrating in multiple ways.

“_H-hah_ – Steve –” He finds he has no problem though, when he gets to verify the underwear situation, Steve nearly popping out of Bucky’s very own briefs when he manoeuvres his best friend’s trousers down, and suddenly Bucky’s cock becomes progressively more interested in everything.

They’re still laughing, still teasing and bantering and trying to one up each other when they’re not wearing any clothes at all, their knuckles brushing as the heads of their cocks meet each other.

“Hah –” Bucky’s gasping at the pleasure of it but trying not to, even as Steve’s openly moaning –

“Oh – oh – come here – _Bucky_ –”

And leans in and kisses him full on the mouth.

“_Ahhh_ –” Bucky forgets all about the fact Steve’s still wearing his t-shirt, just as Bucky is wearing Steve’s wifebeater – the first slide of Steve’s tongue against his own makes him forget _everything_.

“Steve – _ah_ – Steve –” Bucky’s cock becomes exponentially more enthusiastic yet again – which is to say _very_ – while Steve’s own cock is leaking all over both their shafts.

“Please – Buck, please –” The rest of his request is cut off by a huge groan.

“I’ve got you, pal,” Bucky crawls on top of his best friend properly to grind against him, slippery and amazing when Steve pushes back up against him.

They both end up giving it their all, moaning into each other’s mouths, knuckles bumping as they grope and tug and fumble, cockheads kissing, their balls slapping together when they really get into it.

“Buck – Buck – _ahhh_ – _Buckyyy _–” Steve comes first, dick jerking in Bucky’s grip, and everything is from then on that much slicker and wetter and messier, and Bucky is so _so_ into it –

Except he can’t seem to finish. It starts to wind him up and not in a good way, getting so close, panting, straining for it only not to manage, and he’s on the edge of – something – not calling it off, but definitely getting het up and a little pissed off with himself –

“Fuck – _ugh_ –”

“Hey,” Steve flashes compassion immediately and rolls them over, resting his palm and fingers lightly over Bucky’s eyes, shutting out the sight of his own flushed face, shutting out the background of the apartment, shutting out the light, “It’s all right, Buck. It’s all right. Just feel.”

He doesn’t touch Bucky’s cock with his other hand, just rocks against him with his own sloppy, softening shaft, slowing right down, just gentle swaying into Bucky and then away. And it –

It helps.

“Oh – oh –” Everything that was getting so tangled up in Bucky’s head seems to just sort itself out without fuss.

“This okay?” Steve’s voice is warm, so caring, and it grounds Bucky just as the darkness and slowness and simplicity of it grounds him.

“Yeah,” He’s gasping airlessly, overcome by just how good it feels; how very long it’s been since he’s felt as vital and alive and amazing as this, “_Yeah – Steve –_”

“That’s it, Buck,” He can hear Steve’s smile, “Come on; you’re doing so well –”

“_H-hah_ –” Bucky thrusts up against his best friend and before he knows it he’s gasping and spilling over, just like that –

“Oh – oh –” No drama. Just waves of pleasure and relief, tears prickling behind his closed eyes as he clutches at Steve.

They lie together just breathing for some time after, Steve slumped on top of Bucky like the best kind of blankets, sweat and spunk and all the years they could have been doing this between them.

All those years apart too, but Bucky’s not thinking about that. Steve’s hand has migrated up from his eyes to his forehead, one of Bucky’s hands around the crook of Steve’s elbow, holding on.

“Can I ask you something?” Steve asks after a while. There’s a tiny, abashed note to his tone; one Bucky immediately knows.

“I’m not pissed at you for stealing my sock,” Grinning, he predicts what Steve’s wanting to know more than easily enough.

“You – you’re not? I know it was a game, but did I take it too far? I wanted to get your attention, but I didn't mean to push,” Even as he relaxes in relief, Steve pulls back enough for Bucky to see he’s biting his lip too.

Yup, that’s the Rogers’ guilty look all right. 

“Nah,” Bucky gives him a crooked smirk, “Nah, you didn't push. It was fine, punk. I kind of – actually I've always kind of _really liked_ you wearing my stuff. Sock included.”

This is an understatement – it would be fair to say he loves it. It's freeing, finding he can fully admit this now, to himself as well as Steve.

“Seeing you wearing that sock of mine made me crazy; made me want to pull it off you something awful,” Bucky prods Steve between the eyes with the forefinger of his free hand, “Along with maybe the rest of your clothes.”

Steve nips the tip of the finger.

“I've made you something,” he admits.

“Oh?” Bucky thinks of his own endless scarf, which might turn into a gift for Steve if he ever manages to figure out how to cast off, “Am I going to find out what your secret knitting project is?”

“You knew?” Steve does a poor impression of looking like he hasn’t been holing himself up in his room Doing Something over the past couple of evenings.

“You bet I know, punk,” Bucky's money had been on either that or some super shady drawing project.

“For you.”

He’s not entirely surprised when Steve ducks naked into his room and pads back out equally unclothed, a pair of clumsily knitted socks in hand and a slightly sheepish grin on his face.

“I’ll stop stealing your favourites now, of course,” Steve’s brow wrinkles apologetically as he watches Bucky inspect his gift, waiting for his reaction.

“Hmm,” Bucky takes his time over it. The colour of the wool is the exact shade of green he likes so much. He sinks his fingers into the socks, feeling the incredible softness and the perfect amount of stretch, admiring the warmth and the weave, and the picture on the ankles that looks very much like an amateur attempt to render a portrait of a Bucky Bear in wool.

The socks are lopsided and uneven and a little misshapen around the toes, and he utterly adores them.

“You can keep the both of those ones,” Bucky locates the old green sock Steve’s been wearing and tosses it and its partner at him. He still likes them, likes them a whole lot, but he likes the thougt of Steve wearing them that much _more_. He clutches his new punk-made pair, beaming, “I’ve got my new favourites right here.”

“All right,” Grinning just as widely, Steve tugs on the green pair, “Although you know, we could just share these? You know, you can share anything of mine. And any time you want to take socks or anything else off me, Buck –”

Clad in just the socks and the beginnings of a fresh erection, he wiggles his toes.

“Oh, you bet I’ll take them off you,” Bucky agrees, _promises_, drinking in the sight of Steve wearing them –

And then, setting aside his new favourite pair carefully to enjoy putting them on later, he drops to his knees to do just that.

That is, after quite some time of doing something else entirely.


End file.
